Why is my fireplace smoking?
Discover common causes of a smoking chimney and practical solutions to keep your home safe and smoke-free.
Many homeowners are frustrated as their wood-burning fireplace continues to smoke. They are unable to enjoy the warmth and brilliance wood burning fireplaces offer.
There are a few reasons that can cause your fireplace to smoke.
- Using wood that is wet.
- Forgetting to warm up the flue first.
- The fireplace damper is closed or jammed with debris, stopping it from opening properly and will force the smoke back into your home.
- The opening of your flue liner is too large for your chimney providing too much oxygen.
- The installation of a birdcage or rain cap on the top the flue liner can also restrict the airflow.
- Trees are too close and obstructing the air flow.
Here are some solutions to help you with these issues.
- always choose wood that is dry.
- when you are ready to enjoy your wood-burning fireplace, place paper into the fireplace and light it. This will warm up the flue.
- if your damper does not open properly, shake the damper vigorously to free any debris that is jammed. Doing this a couple of times will help to discard any debris on the damper.
- A screen can be installed on the top of your flue liner and replace the need to have a birdcage or rain cap. This will not restrict the airflow.
- if trees are too close to your chimney, contact an expert to trim back the branches of the trees to allow the airflow to be unobstructed.
If the fireplace continues to smoke, after following all of these other instructions, it is usually the opening of your fireplace that is too large. The opening of a fireplace is directly related the size of your chimney flue liners. If the flue liner are too small, it is choking the fireplace and causing smoke to enter the dwelling.
Unfortunately, you cannot increase the size of the flue liner without having to rip out the whole fireplace and that portion of your home.
However, you can reduce the size of your fireplace opening and this will allow less oxygen to the face of the fireplace. You can have your fireplace as deep as what you want , but you cannot have the opening larger than what the flue liner can accommodate.
We hope these tips will help you enjoy the benefits of a wood burning fireplace.
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